Fake news

Senator Iroegbu and Godsgift Onyedinefu with Agency

Facebook has busted an Isreali-led campaign to sway elections in Nigeria as well as targeted countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The social media giant on Thursday said it had removed 265 Facebook and Instagram accounts, pages, groups and events linked to an Israel-based firm due to what it called “inauthentic behaviour” targeting users in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa.

The move is part of wider efforts by Facebook to address concerns over privacy lapses and hate speech in social media.

Facebook said the “inauthentic” activity originated in Israel and focused on Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger and Tunisia as well as in Latin America and Southeast Asia.

“The people behind this network used fake accounts to run pages, disseminate their content and artificially increase engagement,” Nathaniel , head of cyber security policy at Facebook said in a statement.

He identified Israel’s Archimedes Group as the source of some of the activity.

“This organisation and all its subsidiaries are now banned from Facebook, and it has been issued a cease and desist letter,” said Gleicher.

Archimedes was not immediately available for comment

Gleicher said Archimedes had 65 Facebook accounts, 161 pages, 12 events and four Instagram accounts. Some 2.8 million accounts followed one or more of these pages.

He said that the individuals involved also represented themselves as locals, including local news organisations, and published allegedly leaked information about politicians.

“The page administrators and account owners frequently posted about political news, including topics like elections in various countries, candidate views and criticism of political opponents,” Gleicher said.

“We’re taking down these pages and accounts based on their behaviour, not the content they posted.”

He added that around 812,000 dollars was spent for advertisements on Facebook paid for in Brazilian reals, Israeli shekels and US dollars with the first ad running in 2013 2012 and the most recent last month, Gleicher said.

“We have shared information about our analysis with industry partners and policymakers,” he said.

Similarly, Amnesty International on Thursday called for Israel’s government to ensure that an Israeli company, whose spyware has been linked to a WhatsApp breach that may have targeted human rights groups, be held accountable for the way its software is used.

Amnesty on Tuesday filed a petition in Israel seeking the revocation of NSO Group’s export licence and said that it was up to the government to take a firmer stance against export licenses that have “resulted in human rights abuses.”

Israel’s Ministry of Defence declined to comment.

WhatsApp, a unit of Facebook, said on Tuesday that a security breach on its messaging app may have targeted human rights groups.

According to Eva Galperin, Director of cybersecurity at San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, WhatsApp told human rights groups it believed the spyware used was developed by Israel’s NSO.

A second person familiar with the matter also identified spyware from NSO.

Amnesty said in an emailed statement that NSO has “again and again demonstrated their intent to avoid responsibility for the way their software is used,” and that only government intervention would change that.

NSO has not commented on any specific attacks, but following the WhatsApp breach it said it would investigate any “credible allegations of misuse” of its technology which “is solely operated by intelligence and law enforcement agencies”.

NSO’s biggest shareholder, Novalpina Capital, said in a statement that it intends to bring NSO’s governance into alignment with UN principles and will seek insights from Amnesty and other groups “into how best to achieve this important goal.”

WhatsApp, one of the world’s most popular messaging tools which are used by 1.5 billion people monthly, said it had notified the U.S. Department of Justice to help with an investigation into the breach.

And it encouraged its users to update to the latest version of the app, where the breach had been fixed.

One target of the new WhatsApp exploit was a United Kingdom-based human rights lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

The United Kingdom-based human rights lawyer is helping a Saudi dissident and several Mexican journalists mount civil cases against NSO for its alleged role in selling hacking tools to the Saudi and Mexican governments, which they alleged were used to hack into their phones.

NSO says it sells only to law enforcement and intelligence agencies pursuing legitimate targets, such as terrorists and criminals.

Novalpina, in a May 15 letter to Amnesty signed by founding partner Stephen Peel, said Novalpina was “determined to do whatever is necessary to ensure that NSO technology is used for the purpose for which it is intended.

“The prevention of harm to fundamental human rights arising from terrorism and serious crime – and not abused in a manner that undermines other equally fundamental human rights.”

Timi Frank, the former deputy national publicity secretary of All Progressive Congress, APC, and a political activist has publicly expressed his strong commendations for Facebook and the United States firm which exposed the Israeli disinformation company that has helped Buhari and APC to spread false and damaging news against the opposition party’s presidential candidate and the opposition party, PDP. Facebook has announced the closure of the Facebook page of the Israeli consultant company that has used its website and page to spread false news prior and after the 2019 presidential election. These fake news were used to sway the opinion of the Nigerian electorates, and helped to damage the image of Atiku Abubakar. Facebook said that it is doing more now to stop spread of fake news on its platform.

Facebook busted an Isreali-led campaign to sway elections in Nigeria as well as targeted countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The social media giant on Thursday said it had removed 265 Facebook and Instagram accounts, pages, groups and events linked to an Israel-based firm due to what it called “inauthentic behaviour” targeting users in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa.

The move is part of wider efforts by Facebook to address concerns over privacy lapses and hate speech in social media.

Facebook said the “inauthentic” activity originated in Israel and focused on Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Angola, Niger and Tunisia as well as in Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Below is the press statement from Mr Timi Frank:

Press Release

A political activist and former Deputy National Publicuty Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Comrade Timi Frank, has commended a report released by a U.S.-based firm, Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, for exposing an Isreali-based political consulting and lobbying firm named Archimedes, who has been coordinating false reports on social media against former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.

According to a news report published on Friday by Associated Press (AP), titled: “Isreali disinformation campaign targeted Nigerian election”, Frank said that Facebook had on Thursday banned Archimedes from the platform over its “coordinated and deceptive behavior” as well as conducted a sweeping takedown of dozens of accounts and hundreds of pages primarily aimed at disrupting elections in African countries, with some scattered activity in Southeast Asia and Latin America.

The report specifically revealed that the Isreali-based firm (Archimedes) worked for President Muhammadu Buhari to smear his leading opponent, Atiku Abubakar during the last general elections.

Reacting to the development through a statement on Saturday, Frank said that the world will gradually know all the evil secret behind the declaration of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari as the winner of the last presidential election.

According to Frank, one of the pages that Facebook deleted on Thursday was filled with viral misinformation and direct attacks against Abubakar, the former vice president of Nigeria. The page’s banner image showed Abubakar as Darth Vader, the Star Wars villain, holding up a sign reading, “Make Nigeria Worse Again.”

He also quoted the AP’s report “that on the overall, the misleading accounts had reached some 2.8 million users, and the pages had engaged over 5,000 followers, according to Facebook’s estimates.”

While thanking Facebook for bringing down the fake accounts, Frank said that “Nigerians ought to be worried about how the APC-led government is spending huge amount of money just to discredit the rightful winner of the 2019 presidential election, Atiku Abubakar.

“I believe that if a lie goes on for 20 years, truth will definitely catchup with it one day. It will not be long before Nigerians will realise how desperate and fake President Muhammadu Buhari is in his bid to hang onto power.”

The political activist called on the international community to note the Associated Press’ report and the extent of damage done to the main opposition party in Nigeria and its Presidential candidate during the last general election.

“The AP’s report has clearly shown the level of lies sponsored against Atiku during and after the last general election. The campaign of calumny has not stopped but Nigerians should henceforth disregard malicious reports in the social media against the former VP,” Frank stated

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Friday said he has not fled Nigeria, contrary to a social media report that he had travelled out of the county ahead of the presidential election scheduled for Saturday.

Obasanjo spoke with newsmen at his Presidential Library, Abeokuta, describing the Social media post as “fake news.”

The former president was reacting to a Facebook post of one Gbenga Lawal who posted: “Breaking: Obasanjo jets out of Nigeria. He can’t even wait for the thief he is imposing on Nigerians.”

In his reaction, Obasanjo said “Why should I travel out of the country before the election?

“If not for anything, I believe I should be here to perform my civic responsibility, which is to vote according to the dictate of my heart tomorrow and on the second of March.

“Those who are carrying that type of rumour or fake news; I leave them in the hands of God; I am used to that kind of thing.

“In Yoruba land, if your head is hard, you don’t have to worry yourself.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan has denied an allegation that he received $200m from the $1.3bn Malabu oil deal.

Jonathan, who stated this in a statement by his Media Adviser, Ikechukwu Eze, on Tuesday, described a story published by Buzzfeed as false.

He said that it was sponsored by those who were threatened by his rising profile in the international community, adding that the story was meant to tarnish his image.

The former President said, “It is one more in the series of fake news sponsored by those threatened by Dr. Jonathan’s continuously rising profile in the international community.

“Commonsense should have shown the purveyors of this slander that the Malabu oil deal far predated the Jonathan regime and it would only make sense for him to be bribed if he had a time machine to go back in time to when the deal was struck.”

According to Jonathan, the report relied on hearsay evidence from a man, who provided no substance to back up his false claim.

He said, “The man quoted by the report said he ‘assumed’ that Dr. Jonathan would be bribed.”

The former President wondered how the assumption of a man could be enough to smear the reputation of a patriot and international statesman of his calibre.

“The report also wrongly claimed that ‘Jonathan and Etete’ had known each other for years, according to Shell staff, when Jonathan served as a tutor to Etete’s children while he was a minister.”

He said that the claim was clearly ridiculous, adding that nothing could be further from the truth.

The statement said, “In the first place, the former President couldn’t have been a ‘tutor’ to Etete’s children without first establishing a contact with the family. This is because Jonathan met Etete, who served as the Petroleum Minister in Gen. (Sani) Abacha’s military regime for the first time under the succeeding civilian administration, when he was already the deputy governor of Bayelsa State. Even then, the fact remains that ex-President Jonathan has never met any of Etete’s children.

“Jonathan could not have been anybody’s private tutor during that period because he was already in the directorate cadre in the Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission, (now NDDC), having already left the academics, at the time Etete was a serving minister.”

He said that the latest allegation came after the publication of a story that he refused to help the British Government in rescuing the Chibok girls.

The former President noted that the British Government had denied the story.

He also cited a publication that he planned to contest the 2019 election as another lie.

The statement added, “It is instructive that this same old fable apparently intended to rubbish Jonathan’s name locally and internationally is being recycled with more lies added to garnish the narrative, at a time the ex-President is making efforts to resolve the issues in the Peoples Democratic Party.

“Again, let us point out for clarity and for the umpteenth time that while he was in office and now that he is out of office, former President Jonathan did not open and does not own any bank account, aircraft or real estate outside Nigeria. Anyone with contrary information is challenged to publicly publish same.” (Punchng.com)